In a company, such as a printing company, which generates a color printed matter, color of the printed matter is periodically measured and color of a printing device that prints the printed matter is adjusted in order to keep quality of the printed matter. In the color adjustment of the printing device, for example, original image data called a color chart is printed by the printing device, and color of each patch in the printed color chart is measured by the color measuring device. A color shift amount between a measured value of the color of each patch and a target value of the color of each patch is evaluated, and the color of the printing device is adjusted according to an evaluation result.
The color chart includes a plurality of color samples called the patches, each of the plurality of patches is formed by a different color (hue, lightness, and saturation) in many cases, and the plurality of patches are arrayed in a predetermined mode. There are various color charts. For example, there is a color chart having a mode formed by two-dimensionally arraying a plurality of square patches having various colors. In the color chart of the mode, there are various patterns. For example, the patches are arrayed such that a random color arrangement is obtained depending on a content to be evaluated, or the patches are arrayed such that a change in shade between the patches adjacent to each other is decreased like gradation. Not only such color charts are produced by a user using a color chart production tool provided from a manufacturer of the color measuring device, but also the color charts are provided from a public institution. Thus, in the color chart, there are various patterns depending on a shape, a disposition, and a color scheme of the patch.
On the other hand, the number of colors used in the color adjustment of the printing device increases year by year, the number of patches disposed in the color chart also increases with increasing number of colors, and a size (area) of each patch is small. There is also a set chart including plurality of color charts.
Due to such circumstances, it is actually impossible that the colorimetry is performed while a measurement region of the color measuring device is accurately positioned by hand with respect to each patch. Therefore, there is a demand for an automatic system, in which the position of each patch is automatically measured and the color of each patch is measured while the measurement region of the color measuring device is automatically matched with the measured position of each patch. There is a technology, which is disclosed in Patent Literature 1 and related to matching of color printing job output of the printing system, as an example of the system. The system disclosed in Patent Literature 1 is a system for matching of a color printing job of the printing system, and includes a plurality of image marking engines, a first test image on a medium document, the first test image being printed by a first image marking engine and having a data glyph and a plurality of reference patches, and a second test image on the medium document, the second test image being printed by a second image marking engine and having the data glyph and the plurality of reference patches. The first test image and the second test image are printed on an identical surface of the medium document, and the system disclosed in Patent Literature 1 includes an image capturing device that scans the medium document. The scanned first test image and second test image provide calibration data for matching of color correction tables of the first image marking engine and the second image marking engine, and the data glyph and the reference patch of the scanned image data are compared to the retrieved color correction tables and generates a compensation value based on a difference between the scanned image setup data and the color correction table of at least an image document next to a first image document on the first image marking engine or the second image marking engine. The data glyph can include a xerograph, an image path, and other important settings (see Paragraph 0020 in Patent Literature 1). The data glyph can include an image setting, a xerograph setting, a rendering option, transfer/medium-related adjustment, and other printing job attributes (see Paragraph 0022 in Patent Literature 1). The data glyph includes pieces of information such as time, date, a serial number of a machine, a master image name, and a master image serial number (see Paragraph 0034 in Patent Literature 1).
In the system disclosed in Patent Literature 1, a scanner is disposed as output of the system, and the data glyph is detected and interpreted by the scanner (see Paragraphs 0012 and 0025 in Patent Literature 1). Therefore, in the system disclosed in Patent Literature 1, it is necessary to prepare the scanner separated from the system, and it is necessary to input information about the data glyph interpreted by the scanner to the system, whereby the system becomes complicated. When a user forgets to input the information about the data glyph interpreted by the scanner to the system, the user cannot use the information about data glyph in the system.